Super Metroid Part 1

Still an immutable gold standard for the genre 30 years out.

Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard HD Part 3

Gotta be honest guys the sense of progression and power scaling is really off in this one. But on the upside, once you hit level 30 we can Retire and get some nifty stat bonuses.

Retirement was basically worthless in the first game; getting +3 to one stat and a few extra skill points was hardly worth the effort it took to grind your character all the way back up from level 1.  Here it's actually surprisingly good, though, and worth doing once you hit level 30.  At 30 you get +4 to ALL stats, plus four extra skill points to spend.  The new character also comes in at half the level of the old one (maxing out at 30), so it's not too much trouble to power back up.

 

Sayaka's identically-named and identical-looking successor

Just in case you're curious, yes, you do get more points for retiring characters at higher levels.  But there's a definite problem of diminishing returns.

30-39: +4 to stats, +4 skill points (In the original version; in the HD version it seems to have been reduced to 3 stat points)

40-49: +3 to stats, +5 skill points

50-59: +4 to stats, +6 skill points

60-69: +5 to stats, +7 skill points

70-98: +5 to stats, +8 skill points

99: +10 to stats, +10 skill points

Retiring again once you hit 70 might be worth the few extra points, but the level 99 bonus is not worth pursuing in any way, shape or form.  The level cap here once again is 70, but each time you retire a  max-level character and bring in a successor, their max level goes up by 1.  So if you want to get to level 99 you need to grind out an extra 1,733 levels, which is an astronomical amount of work for very little payoff.  Suffice to say I will never, ever do this.

Xenosaga Episode 1: Der Wille Zur Macht Part 3

 Always Equip Ether Skills

Etrian Odyssey II HD Part 2

Frozen Peaness

Etrian Odyssey II HD Part 1

Considered the black sheep of the series by many, but I still think it has some fun quirks.

The classes were rebalanced and tweaked for the sequel, but they severely overcorrected in the process; all the good classes from the first game are now average at best while the mediocre classes from the first game are now ridiculously powerful.  Case in point, our main-game party will be using exactly none of the classes we used in the first game.

The Party

Sayaka the Ronin - Ronin were of questionable use in the first game; while they had quite high damage output, their low defense was a definite detriment.  As was their mediocre skillset, which required you to spend a turn getting into the appropriate stance before you could use any of the skills tied to it.  Well, stances are now passive buffs to all the skills under their umbrella, so that problem's gone.  They also get new elemental skills that hit all enemies on the field, so they're your best front-line damage dealer by far.  They still have crappy defense, but the sheer amount of hurt they can dish out, and passives that bolster their evasion chances, more than makes up for it.

Ren the Dark Hunter - Dark Hunters were a bit underpowered in the first game, but still had some quite powerful skills to their name.  While they did lose their useful Fury and Boost Up skills, their others are definitely improved.  Bait is no longer tied to having a sword equipped, and you even gain gained a magic-attuned version of it so you can counter spells too.  Ecstasy is also massively powerful now, and it's much easier to set up since their Boost Skill fully binds a single enemy with a 100% success rate, so these guys can do a frankly terrifying amount of damage.  Climax is also given a considerable boost - being able to instakill normal enemies and FOEs whose HP is under 55% (at rank 10) is very valuable.

Frost the Gunner - Pretty much the only ranged attacker you need now.  While their skills aren't too great for the most part, you get affordable elemental coverage from them, Ricochet is 3-5 hits for good damage, and Medishot is a handy full-party status clearer (doesn't work on binds though, sadly).  Not too much else to say, really.

Flufe the War Magus - A new class, which is kind of a middle-ground between a Landsknecht, a Medic and a Troubadour.  Jack-of-all-trades classes tend to suck in RPGs like this, but given that all the classes it's cribbing from have been nerfed considerably, a character who's passable at a lot of things and only takes up one party slot makes a pretty good choice.  Being able to equip swords gives them a considerable speed advantage over the Medic, they get a stronger attack buff than the Troubadour (with the disadvantage of only affecting a single character), and their sword skills sync up surprisingly well with a Hexer, inflicting extra statuses, damage or even HP/TP drain on enemies already afflicted with a status.  Finally, they get a handy skill that allows them to transfer a chunk of their TP to another party member, so they keep your party topped-up as a Troubadour would.  Overall, they're not great at anything but they're surprisingly decent at a lot of things.

Cee Dee the Hexer - The butt-monkey class of EO1 is now a straight-up game breaker.  No joke; they went from being the worst class in the first game to the strongest class in the second game, and arguably the strongest class in the entire series.  Debuffs, inflicting statuses with a surprisingly high success rate and eliminating enemy resistances are all very nice, but what seals the deal is one skill in particular - Revenge.  It does more damage the lower the Hexer's HP is, and at level 10, deals 2.55x the difference between the Hexer's current and max HP.  Properly set up, this can do well over 2000 unavoidable, non-elemental damage per use, which will mop up basically everything in your path during the main game.  It remains quite awesome into the postgame too.  The only downside is they're a very point-hungry class, which makes them a slow starter in the early game.

The Other Classes

Landsknecht - While they have relatively few skill changes from the first game, their TP costs are higher and their damage output has been nerfed quite a bit.  Basically there's little reason to use them over a Ronin now, unless you really like the elemental chaser skills.

Survivalist - Not gonna lie, this one hurts.  In EO1 they were the best class in the game for their speed, damage output and field skills; now they're just item farmers and little else.  Their field skills remain top-notch - being able to negate random encounters, gather all three resource types and nullify damage floors is nice, but their severely weakened damage output really hurts their usefulness in a main party.  Even the gathering skills are nerfed now - they only go to level 5 instead of 10 and you only get one gathering per level per day as opposed to 2.  Still, a party of Survivalists can rack up resources pretty efficiently, so they have their uses; just far less than they did before.  And as a big middle finger Atlus also decided to have powerful enemies randomly appear when using gathering skills, so even doing that is a risk for a gatherer party...

Protector - Yep, they took a pretty big hit too.  Their most useful skill (Defender) is gone and they have much lower damage potential, and their other defensive skills now have a chance of failing outright after the first use in any given battle.  You'll still want one in the postgame for their incredibly useful elemental-negating skills (natch), but during the main campaign they're not really worth bothering with.

Medic - The medic fares better than most of the returning classes, though they're a far cry from their godly status in the first game.  Atlus realized Immunize was way too good so they ditched it in every subsequent game (and even nerfed it a lot in the remake of the first) and Healing Touch is gone now too, so no more dirt-cheap health topoff after a battle.  Their damage potential, once again, is considerably lowered, so they're pretty much just a designated healer now and that's it.

Alchemist - Already a pretty situational class in the first game, they're now pretty much completely useless in 2.  Their skills cost way more TP now for a negligible increase in damage, and they're even pointlessly given physical-element attacks to sling around when there's plenty of better ways to deal physical damage.  Basically, just don't bother with them.

Troubadour - Yep, they're back too.  They've got a few decent new skills, like being able to erase buffs on all enemies rather than just one and reduce the chance of status effects landing, but their extremely useful HP and TP regenerating skills are gone.  Boosting attack is still handy, of course, but there's other options for that now too.  Just not much point to having one anymore, really.

Beast - The new class that must be unlocked, though thankfully it's much sooner than the first game's unlockables, coming at the end of the first stratum.  Unfortunately they're still not worth the wait - while they look like interesting on paper, seeming to be a class that can serve as a protector or a powerful damage dealer, their skills are just plain terrible - they don't synergize with one another in any useful way, and they're somehow an even squishier glass cannon than the Ronin when built for damage without enough of a power increase to justify using them.  The remake gives the Beast class a massive overhaul, and they're actually fairly useful as a tank class there, but in base EO2 there's just no good reason to use one whatsoever.